1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a smart card, and in particular, to a multifunctional touch smart card.
2. Description of the Related Art
Nowadays, as science and technologies develop rapidly, various functions such as an electronic wallet, an entrance guard card or a membership card can be integrated into a smart card, so smart cards are gradually integrated into people's lives. In view of the multifunctionality of smart cards, many banks make credit cards/financial cards into smart cards each having an electronic wallet, an entrance guard card or a membership card integrated. A user may use only one card to perform a card payment transaction, make a mobile payment or pass an entrance guard, thereby providing the user with greater convenience.
With the maturation and development of smart cards, many companies and manufacturers improve structures and functions of smart cards, making smart cards suitable for wider application. For example, referring to FIG. 13 and FIG. 14, a smart card 90 is disposed with a button 92 and a small screen 94. A user only needs to press the button 92, and the screen 94 then displays, for example, the balance in an electronic wallet or membership points owned by the user currently, thereby making use of the smart card 90 more convenient. Alternatively, when the user makes an online card payment, the user presses the button 92, and the screen 94 can then display a one-time password (OTP). The user needs to enter the one-time password onto an online verification page of a bank to complete a card payment. In this way, a risk that a lawless person steals information of a credit card and uses the credit card to make a payment can be avoided, thereby making the smart card more practicable. For another example, a Bluetooth low energy (BLE) element is disposed inside a smart card. When the user presses a button, the Bluetooth element of the smart card can be paired with or connected to a Bluetooth module of a mobile phone. In this way, when making an online card payment, the user only needs to place the smart card near the mobile phone and presses a button on the smart card, and the Bluetooth element of the smart card can then be connected to the Bluetooth module of the mobile phone, to pass the validation of the bank, thereby improving the security of online transactions.
As functions of smart cards become increasingly complex, the smart cards also have increasingly complex structures. For example, the foregoing button, screen, and Bluetooth element are all disposed in the inner space of the smart card. In respond to a function added to a smart card, the inner space of the smart card also needs to be disposed with an element or module (for example, a Bluetooth antenna) corresponding to the new function. Moreover, the screen and the Bluetooth element both need electric power to perform operation. Therefore, a battery also needs to be disposed in the inner space of the smart card to supply electric power to the screen and the Bluetooth element to perform operation. As can be seen, the inner space of the smart card is very crowded.
However, with the development of the society and the development of science and technologies, an increasing quantity of functions and different kinds of cards need to be integrated into the same smart card. However, the inner space of the smart card is limited, and each element occupies some inner space. For example, referring to FIG. 14 again, currently, the button 92 used in the commercially available smart card 90 is a mechanical button (for example, a membrane button). The mechanical button has a relatively large volume and has a certain thickness. Due to technical limitations in the current production process, the mechanical button cannot be disposed overlapping another element or circuit. The mechanical button needs to be independently disposed in the inner space of the smart card. Therefore, space for another element to be disposed is compressed, so that the smart card has no space to add a new element, which impedes the development of smart cards. Next, contact metal pieces on outer sides of existing smart cards are all fabricated and perform information transmission according to the ISO7816 standard. In the ISO7816 standard, no function is set in a partial area (for example, an area 97 of a contact metal piece 96 of the smart card 90 in FIG. 13) of a contact metal piece. Therefore, although the contact metal piece takes up certain space of the smart card, the contact metal piece is not fully used. For a manufacturing company or a manufacturer of a smart card, this is not a desirable structural design. Moreover, as a smart card has increasingly complex functions, an amount of electric power required by the smart card also keeps increasing, so that the smart card has decreased electric endurance, thereby easily resulting in a situation in which the smart card can no longer be used because electric power of a battery of a smart card is used up.
In conclusion, how to simplify the internal structure of a smart card and effectively use the inner space of the smart card to add a function or enhance the capability of the smart card is commercially required and is a problem that still needs to be resolved.